Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/191

 THE FEDERAL RELATIONS

OF OREGON

on the tranquility of the district itself, interests and sufficient for our honor."

Among

all

is

the best for our

mind was from Joshua

the other indications that the British

itself

adjusting

it

181

to 49

is

a

significant letter

Bates, head of the British banking house of Baring, to a Birmingham Quaker, Sturgis. Early in December he wrote that is about right and stockjobbers were saying "the 49 there can be no difficulty." This was written before Congress had received Folk's message so the suggestion of fuller terms

for a settlement are the

more

suggestive.

The Hudson's Bay

Company, he said, desired a settlement and might be more tractable if allowed twenty years' occupation and the right of pre-emption of the lands they were then cultivating, together with the right to elect their allegiance when the United States

assumed

full

"This

control.

Vancouver's Island

much

with

49

and

the

end

of

any American, be he Bostonian or Carolinian, will, I think, consent to give. If Great Britain is not satisfied with that, let them have war if they want it." 20 In April Bates wrote Sturgis that the Oregon is

as

as

21 Question was as good as settled. more than all the diplomatic notes.

"Your pamphlet has done I

claim the merit of sug-

mode of getting rid of the question of the Hudson's Bay Company and the navigation of the Columbia, by allowing the company to enjoy it for a fixed number of years. Mr. McLane and the Government had not thought of it. In the gesting the

Quarterly is an article written by Croker which completely adopts these views." The British government was, as McLane had more than

once pointed out, waiting for Congress to act upon the notice for as soon as word reached London that the Senate had passed the resolutions and before McLane had received instructions,

Aberdeen summoned him

to a

long conversation and

20 2 Dec. In No. West Bound. Arb., 42-3. 21 3 Apr., Ibid. The Quartely referred to is the London Quarterly Review J. Q. Adams received a copy of Sturgis' pamphlet, in which Bates' suggestions had been incorporated, also a letter from Sturgis who told him, Adams, that his speech in Oregon was inflaming his countrymen to war. Adams notes in his diary (Memoirs, XII, 256-7), that "Sturge" was a Quaker to whose unqualified Adams took the trouble to write denunciation of war he could not subscribe. Sturgis explaining his own position on the whole subject.

quoted above.